@eyo @eyo

My brother has a middle class job (teacher) and a hard science PhD and he had to buy a friggin boat to live on because he couldn't afford the insane housing prices. Fortunately he knows how to take care of a boat but most people can't do that.

Up here in Seattle, we just had a city ordinance to fund low income housing rolled back after a disinformation campaign by Amazon (who threatened local construction jobs if it passed). They also are a major campaign contributor for the mayor Jenny Durken. The majority of the homeless in Seattle are King County residents (according to their last permanent address) and are not suffering from mental illness or other problems. They just can't afford the insane rents.

The amount of the tax was a pittance: $275/year for the top 20% by revenue. That is a rounding error for companies like Amazon. Even funding the $400 million that the chamber of commerce 's study said would be needed (which they tried to suppress when the numbers didn't come out the way they wanted - kudos to the MacKinsey group for being passing honest) would come to only 10x the amount of the tax and could be spread over several years.

Greed, self-absorption and the toxic ethic of meritocracy at work.

Speaking of ugly auras... oink oink! D-Value Clueless Pigs live inside the MAGA bubble, they are armored up and rolling. Union strong. lol good luck from Collapsifornia. peace

Last week I received a letter from a concerned citizen regarding the explosion of homeless encampments that have invaded Cloverdale in recent months and the negative impacts those encampments place on our community. The citizen brought up several pertinent points, spoke to our city council at the June 12 council meeting and requested the city “do something.”

I appreciated her insightful and passionate comments. I know I speak for each of our city leaders when I say we take her concerns seriously and we are taking active measures to address the situation.

Based upon the citizen’s legitimate concerns and my own professional experiences with our entrenched homeless population, I want to provide our community with information on what the city is doing in this regard. As you are aware, the homeless epidemic, locally, regionally and statewide, is a complex matter. Combatting homelessness encompasses much more than frontline law enforcement strategies. Homelessness is a social issue that impacts all of the cities and communities in Sonoma County, including Cloverdale.

It is an issue that requires a countywide, shared responsibility in planning and development of solutions. One of the critical factors in reducing homelessness is the recognition that the complex problems that lead to homelessness require specific programs and coordinated services directed to specific target populations. Sonoma County works together with other local jurisdictions to reduce homelessness through a variety of planning and funding processes. Despite our lack of available local services, Cloverdale is actively involved in these conversations.

Homelessness is caused by many factors, and while across the board there are similar factors that contribute to homelessness, some are region specific. In Sonoma County, the main causes of homelessness are housing availability and affordability.

Currently, Sonoma County is experiencing a housing crisis with only one percent vacancy for rentals. This along with the rising cost of rent throughout the county is causing many residents to fall into homelessness. Housing affordability and availability are routinely cited as two key factors in homelessness, but there are plenty of other contributing factors to homelessness. These factors include substance abuse and mental illness. In Sonoma County alone, around 15-20 percent of homeless individuals are mentally ill. While these individuals make up a small portion of the total homeless population, they are undoubtedly the most visible in Sonoma County.

The primary cause of an individual’s inability to obtain or retain housing is often difficult to pinpoint as it is often the result of multiple and interrelated causes, including the loss of a job, alcohol or drug use, eviction and/or an argument with family or friends or that they were asked to leave, are each significant contributing factors to the pandemic.

Law enforcement perspective

Allow me to first discuss Cloverdale’s homeless issue from a local law enforcement perspective. I feel compelled to point out that many of the homeless encampments fall outside the curtilage of Cloverdale’s city limits within the county jurisdiction and thus, we are obligated to defer to Sonoma County’s protocols in dealing with the issue. Encampments erected on the east side of the river occur in the county, as do any encampments found north of the pedestrian bridge along the river walking path, regardless of side.

However, since 2012, we have been proactively engaging with the transient population within our city limits. During the summer of 2012, we located 13 separate and distinct homeless encampments entrenched along the west side of the railroad tracks near the cemetery, just south of the railroad tunnel.

My concern was that the accumulation of garbage and rotting food was an attractive nuisance to rats leading to a potentially destructive environment. In addition, with no facilities available, the build-up of urine and feces created an unhealthy biohazard, especially near the river. There were also tangible fire safety concerns and the real possibility that a vehicle careening down the embankment from U.S. Highway 101 could cause serious bodily injury or death. These encampments also negatively impacted citizens visiting loved ones buried in the cemetery.

So, using a combination of citations, arrests, the offer of county services, and with the assistance of CalTrans, we were able to remove all 13 encampments. In fact, CalTrans came in and cleared away the foliage along the railroad tracks in an effort to remove the camouflage aspect of these encampments. Our efforts proved successful for several years.

Since 2012, we routinely came across a random encampment here and there; a couple erected in the cemetery itself. Just last month we encountered five encampments in the same location near the railroad tracks and tunnel, some intricately designed. We have been relatively successful in getting these individuals to move their camps without much issue or pushback.

In general, the consensus from this segment of society is they have nowhere else to go and they refuse our attempts to connect them with services designed to help pull them out from the quagmire. In addition, we regularly contact transients in the downtown Plaza or at the freeway onramps.

Changes in laws and policies affect enforcement

More unsettling, however, is that over the past few years we have seen a steady transition of rights afforded to the homeless by the court system. Homeless advocates now represent individuals in court to fight the quality-of-life citations/arrests. It is now legal for the homeless to sleep/camp in their vehicles. It is now legal for the homeless to sit, lay or sleep in a public way at any time of day or night.

Most recently, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch informed me that local governments must provide notice to individuals living in homeless encampments before closure, to offer a housing alternative and to offer storage for personal items, based upon a 2016 ruling by the United States District Court, Northern District of California involving the City of Eureka. In my reading of the court case, we will be held under the same restrictions moving forward. In addition, Cloverdale does not have appropriate shelter options for our homeless. It will also be an undue burden on the city and/or police department to provide storage containers to each of the homeless individuals and monitor them accordingly. The reality is we do not have the storage space or the manpower to coordinate these efforts. From my perspective, and without significant funding opportunities, it looks like we will have to accept the reality that homeless encampments erected on public property are here to stay.

Cloverdale is not unique in this situation. Each city has its own level of homelessness and its own strategy to deal with the problem. As each city cracks down on its homeless population, those individuals move on to the next nearby jurisdiction until the process starts anew. In addition, the fact that the Sonoma County Sheriff will not incarcerate the homeless for quality of life crimes, nor will the Sonoma County District Attorney prosecute those crimes only exacerbates the problem. Yet citizens and business owners look to law enforcement to facilitate the removal of the individuals and blight from public view.

I have always advocated we are not criminalizing homelessness, rather we are holding those individuals accountable for litter, bio-hazardous waste and potential fire dangers. When a transient uproots his tent he leaves behind environmental destruction in the form of accumulated garbage. Once we stop enforcing our camping ordinance, these encampments will continue to grow and other segments of our community will be outraged that we are not doing anything.

I have instructed my officers to continue contacting homeless individuals at their encampments to discourage other violations of the law, but we will not make any efforts to move any homeless encampments that are on public property. If we continue to get calls for homeless camping on private property, we will advise the property owner to erect “No Trespassing” signs and we will go through the trespassing arrest procedures when necessary. In addition, we will use our authority under our municipal code to enforce other code violations.

However, enforcing quality-of-life crimes and generating turnstile behavior through the court system is neither the short-term nor long-term remedy. We are a proactive police department and, when quality-of-life violations occur, our officers have discretion to arrest the perpetrators or let them off with a conditional warning, such as cleaning up the debris in and around the campsite. It is obvious through both studies and anecdotally that the “whack-a-mole” mentality is not the answer.

Societal roles in preventing homelessness

So, what roles and responsibilities do society and government at large play in resolving the cycle of homelessness? Everyone knows we cannot “police” our way out of the homeless crisis. Enforcement is just one small aspect of the larger homeless issue. Society at large continues to place a greater burden on police departments to “fix” the homeless issue, yet time and again critical services, from low-income housing to mental health, are cut from county and state budgets.

Rhetorically, how is Cloverdale expected to provide alternate shelter options without accessing a sustainable revenue source to cover the costs? Cloverdale’s budget does not have funds to pay for motel rooms or to build a dedicated shelter. Diverting precious city resources to clean up the refuse left behind also negatively impacts the quality of life in other areas of the city as other public works responsibilities are placed on the back burner.

Homelessness does not occur in a vacuum. More often than not, these individuals deal with mental illness, medical maladies, poor economic and job opportunities and a lack of sufficient services. Due to current events, this subject recently took on a new dimension with the devastation within Sonoma and Napa County from the wildfires, specifically the Tubbs Fire. As a result, the homeless population increased substantially overnight, as has the overarching issue. This tragic event only forced the already marginalized group of the mentally ill homeless to further marginalization. This disaster encapsulates how fragile the line is between stability and devastation.

As dire as the situation is, we are not without remedies. I am researching grant opportunities to fund a homeless outreach team specifically for Cloverdale.

Currently, we work hand-in-hand with Catholic Charities. The center provides food, resources, counseling, intake for shelters and other services for those in need, mainly in Santa Rosa. It also has showers, laundry, telephone and mail services for an individual’s use. Catholic Charities offers a variety of essential services for those people who want to take advantage of the benefits.

We provide homeless individuals and families with as many resources as possible. For example, Sonoma County’s Coordinated Intake Project offers a single access point for intake into all homeless services. Since February 2015, families with children experiencing homelessness may enroll in the Coordinated Intake project by dialing 2-1-1 during business hours.

Unfortunately, there will always be a segment of this population that actively resists our efforts to transition them into shelters and services. Individually, officers will occasionally go out of their way to buy food for transients – out of their own pockets. Instead of sliding money into their hands directly, which invariably goes for drugs and/or alcohol, these officers understand that providing a meal through charity, no matter how small, sends a message that we want to help.

City plans to address local homelessness

The homeless issue will now be a standing item on the monthly Finance/Administration/Police sub-committee agenda, chaired by two city council members. The public is more than welcome to attend these public meetings. They are held in the city hall conference room, 124 North Cloverdale Boulevard, on the fourth Thursday of every month starting at 2 p.m. The next meeting is scheduled for June 28.

In addition, the City will be actively coordinating with our Sonoma County partners, including but not limited to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, Sonoma County Continuum of Care (CoC), Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County and Sonoma County Task Force for the Homeless, to effectively address the homeless problem and its ancillary problems. It is my desire that a multi-agency approach to this matter will generate positive inroads toward fixing the deep-rooted conundrum.

I know this commentary will not provide our citizens the quick fix they seek. I trust I have demonstrated my department’s transparency and dedication to keeping this issue a priority. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about this issue.

Stephen Wayne Cramer is the Cloverdale Chief of Police.

@The Aspie Corner Don't let em get you down. Ain't worth the worry.

And now with Justice Kennedy retiring, the Retard Repig Terrorist Movement (Thanks to their Pig Democrat enablers, led by the Clintons) will be able to put another far-right corpo-religious fucktard on the Supreme Court. Consider the 20th century completely erased. Thanks, Billary. Thanks, Drumpf. May you both rot in whatever hell you Christofascist fucks pretend to believe in.

@Big Al

the history of the democratic party, and the duopoly for that matter, i.e., it's pretty much always been this way. Way before Pelosi, way before Schumer, way before the Clintons.
And that should be the biggest argument against trying to reform the duopoly parties. Focusing on the Clintons, Pelosi, Crowley, etc., the DNC establishment gives people some kind of hope that if they can just get rid of them, the party will change. Thus, progressives celebrate a democratic party 28 year old politician as some kind of savior or "huge" victory. A never ending stick and carrot game. Ain't gonna happen.